Astronaut Captures Incredible Images of Australian Bush Fires

Intense wild fires, or bush fires as they are called in Australia, are burning out of control across southeast Australia with authorities describing the condition as “catastrophic.” The huge fires were easily visible from the International Space Station on Tuesday and onboard, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has been watching from above.

See more of his images below:

Officials say more than 130 fires, many uncontained, are burning in the heavily populated New South Wales state, where dry conditions are fueling the fires as temperatures reached 45 degrees and wind gusts reached more than 100 kilometers per hour.

Huge plumes of smoke from bush fires in Australia were visible from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Chris Hadfield.

In Tasmania, an island south of Australia, rescue officials are still trying to locate around 100 residents who have been missing after a fire tore through a village, destroying dozens of homes. You can see images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite that were taken on January 7, 2013 at the Earth Observatory website.

Growing up I was taught it was either the world’s largest island or the world’s smallest continent. Nowadays Australia is geologically considered the largest part of the continent of Australasia which includes New Guinea to the North. As for moderate, keep in mind that the mainland is approximately the size of the continental USA, although since the largest part of the interior is arid most of the population lives in the capital cities of each state, one of which is Tasmania.